Horace Ars Poetica

Horace really seems like my kind of guy. His need for decorum, although it may seem a bit tight-assed, is probably my favorite thing about him. I took this in a commercial sense seeing as how we operate in the world today. Every writer needs to understand the importance of the appropriateness of their published work. For a writer wanting to get started, this is a great way to make their work easily understandable and a good read for the average reader. Finding a style that they can excel with and build upon should be the number one priority. This can be applied to many facets of life, but this is a literature class so I will not go off on a tangent. But getting back to my point, what is written should be written in a way that would make it easily understandable to the reader and want the reader to come back to this author for more, whether it be a text book or a steamy sex novel about vampires.

The social decorum that Horace speaks of  is also of high interest with today's meltdowns of economies and the hatred many people have for who is "running" their country. Protest poems are absolutely a good thing to get the word of the people out in times of distress. Take for instance, back in 2003 or 2004, when Laura Bush asked writers to an evening of poetry at the White House, many of the poets declined the invitation and one, Sam Hammil, with the help of others, staged readings at libraries and collected poems and published the book Poets Against the War. People should, and I'm proud that they do, take a stand for what they believe is best for their country. Another example is all of the propaganda, that is now somewhat comical, that was used during 1940's to draw support for the war. Propaganda is a-ok.

http://youtu.be/eAttrxM0nN4

(I couldn't get this thing to embed a video to save my life)


I should probably mention that I do understand the importance of experimentation in writing. It is important for writing to move forward. Not to mention the fact that people get bored very easily and sometimes just want something different. Horace does tell us, after all, that "words once uttered forget the way home" (131). So while keeping in mind the importance of the published work, sometimes a writer just has to do his thing while he's doing his thing.

While doing a bit wandering on the Google, I ran across some interesting tidbits about our man Horace. First off I have to give a shout out to Poets.org. and then another shout out to Maecenas for giving Horace a farm to live on so that he could concentrate on his writing. Horace was said to have loved this little set up and that he would just chill in bed until 10 a.m. many a morning. How about that.



http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/331

Aristotle

I was able to identify with Aristotle's writings much easier than Plato's. For me, the appeal of Aristotle begins with his scientific approach to the subject at hand. The categorization he uses makes Poetics read like a kind of instruction manual to poetry. He goes as far as to break down how a vowel and consonant are made and even defines an utterance. I had never even thought about what an utterance really is until I read this. He goes to talk about names. This where he really gets nerdy and explains what a metaphor is by using taxonomy to break down the parts. In this he basically explains how phrases that are (usually) more dramatic sounding are used in place of the boring literal phrases. He moves on up the food chain until he gets to a debate between tragedies and epics. So to make a long entry short, Aristotle begins with the smallest part of the whole and works his way to the larger animals, explaining everything that he will be discussing later in detail up front so that as the reader moves along in the writings they have already been versed in what they are up against. With this, Poetics a shining example of how to phrase an argument.

What stood out to me most in this selection was Aristotle's praise of Homer for being "well aware of what he himself should do" (110). As far back as middle school, whether it was writing a story or a research paper, I was always told by my English teachers to show what I mean rather than tell. I was oblivious to where this had come from and ignored my teachers' advice, out of complete and utter ignorance (and probably some arrogance too), until my final year of high school when Mrs. Leighton told me where this advice had come from and that she and the other teachers were not just full crap. 

Plato's Republic

This was my second time around reading Plato and I must say that this selection was a bit easier to grasp than what was assigned so long ago in World Lit. What stood out to me the most was just how much literature Plato wanted to get rid of. Of course, with the fact that I have been completely against any kind of censorship since way back in my high school years, and with what has been going on with internet censorship recently, I shouldn't be too surprised with this grabbing my attention. So I'm sure that I missed a lot of what Plato was trying to get across because of all the distractions that I was facing with this whole censorship nonsense.

What I found that I did enjoy was the allegorical cave. This was my second time reading about this and I went a lot deeper in thought this time around. During class Logan had mention some movie that followed this same position on how humans see the world and I believe it was Vince that brought up The Matrix. This is some deep stuff. I wondered what I would do if I were in the position to where I learned how the world is really operating. Would I be like the dashing Fox Mulder and the hard nosed, and thorn in the Soylent Corporation's side, Robert Thorn(great name BTW), risking my life to find the truth and spread the word to all the people. Or could I possibly turn my back on the world like Krycek and the Cigarette Smoking Man? Maybe I would just simply go mad and be that crazy guy that all the kids make up horror stories about. I'm pretty sure I'd be dashing and Mulder-esque, but a body just can't be too sure.